The Twenty-Sixth Flash

Vivid images of former days appeared before me: the years I had spent in those houses, nearlytwenty years filled with joy, study, and the companionship of beloved students. Those precious memories passed before me one after another, like scenes from a film, appearing and then fading away. For some time, this spectacle continued to unfold before the eye of my imagination.

At that moment, I was astonished by the condition of those absorbed in worldly life. How could they deceive themselves so utterly? For what I had witnessed demonstrated beyond doubt that this world is transient and that human beings are no more than passing guests within it.

I saw with my own eyes how true were the words of those who say:

“The world is treacherous, cruel, and deceptive. Do not be deceived by it.”

I also understood that just as a person is attached to his body and his home, so too is he attached to his city, his country, and even the whole world.

For while I wept with my two eyes over the sorrows of my own old age, I wished to weep with ten eyes over not merely the old age of my madrasaAn Islamic educational institution where students study religious sciences such as the Qur’an, hadith, Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), and Arabic, sometimes alongside other subjects., but its death. And because my beloved homeland had itself half died, I felt the need to weep with a hundred eyes.

It is related in a narration attributed to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) that every morning an angel calls out:

لِدُوا لِلْمَوْتِ وَابْنُوا لِلْخَرَابِ“Bring children into the world only for them to die, and build houses only for them to fall into ruin.

That is:

“You are born only to die, and you build houses only for them to be destroyed.”

I heard this truth not with my ears, but with my eyes.

Indeed, that scene moved me to such bitter tears that even now, ten years later, whenever my imagination returns to it, it still weeps.

The ruined dwellings upon that ancient citadel, which had stood for thousands of years; the city beneath it, which had aged so terribly in eight years that it seemed eight centuries old; the death of my madrasaAn Islamic educational institution where students study religious sciences such as the Qur’an, hadith, Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), and Arabic, sometimes alongside other subjects. at the foot of the citadel, once so full of life and a gathering place for beloved friends; and the death of the madrasas throughout the Ottoman Empire—all these together formed, as it were, one immense spiritual funeral.

And the massive rock upon which the citadel of VanA city in eastern Turkey where Bediuzzaman Said Nursi lived and taught for many years before his exile to western Turkey. stood had become a gravestone raised above that great funeral.

It was as though my departed students, who only eight years earlier had been with me in that madrasaAn Islamic educational institution where students study religious sciences such as the Qur’an, hadith, Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), and Arabic, sometimes alongside other subjects., were now weeping alongside me from their graves. Even the ruined walls and scattered stones of the city seemed to share my sorrow, and I beheld them as though they too were truly weeping.

I then understood that I could no longer endure this estrangement within my own homeland. I felt that I must either descend into the grave to join my departed companions or withdraw into a cave among the mountains and await my death there.